


The Loneliness of the Domestic Guinea Pig

by Lather_Rinse_Repeat



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Animal AU, Death of OMC, F/F, I don't know why they just are, If this isn't crack I don't know what is, M/M, Of natural causes after a long life, They are guinea pigs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-20
Updated: 2020-08-20
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:48:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26009776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lather_Rinse_Repeat/pseuds/Lather_Rinse_Repeat
Summary: In Switzerland, it is illegal to own a single guinea pig.  This story is not set in Switzerland, so Guinea Pig Dean is pretty lonely until his Human Lady gets wise.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Charlie Bradbury/Rowena MacLeod
Kudos: 46





	The Loneliness of the Domestic Guinea Pig

When Dean's Human Man died, he was pretty sad. Human Man was old and had started to smell like the stuff Human Lady used to clean Dean's habitat, which was an okay smell for a habitat floor but not a good smell on Human Man. So Dean was able to prepare himself. Human Lady was also sad but resigned, like Dean. 

Dean wasn't sure about Human Lady. Until she started coming around not long before Human Man died, Dean wasn't even sure if he'd ever see another human up close. He'd see them outside, getting in and out of cars, bringing paper and boxes and food to the door, sometimes just running past the house. When he saw the running humans, Dean would feel like he should get on his wheel and also run. Sometimes he would even act on those feelings.

At first, Human Lady came by a few times but then more often. Toward the end she lived there, but that wasn't for long. Just until Human Man died. Then Human Lady really cleaned the place out, talking to Dean while she did that. Dean wasn't sure about everything she told him, but he gathered that she was going to move him to a new place. The place where she lived. Dean wondered if she had other humans, too, or if she was like Human Man.

She was like Human Man, sort of. She did live without other humans, which Dean thought was sad, but she didn't smell sad at all. She smelled nice. Her house smelled nicer than Human Man's. She played music that Dean liked; it sounded younger than the music Human Man had liked. And Dean got to keep his old habitat, which worked out for him.

She talked to Dean more than Human Man ever had and gradually, Dean began to understand what she was saying. She was talking about loneliness, and how she'd learned that guinea pigs get lonely for other guinea pigs. Which Dean had tried to communicate to her, and Human Man before her, but they never understood him.

"If we lived in [garbled], I'd _have_ to get you a friend," she told him. "But just because it's not [garbled] here doesn't mean I won't. And I'm gonna get you another little dude friend because I like you but I don't know if we need a lot of babies around here."

Dean was okay with that. He'd seen some pretty gruesome stuff in the pet store and he wasn't sure if he'd be a good parent or a bad parent.

Human Lady brought home a cage with a new friend in it. 

"His name is Castiel. Cas for short," Human Lady told him. Dean recognized the name. Human Lady watched a lot of TV, including a TV show with some men who went around having pretty violent adventures. Dean liked the show; it had cool music and also one of the characters had his same name. And maybe that was why Human Lady brought him home a friend with the same name as one of the other characters. He wondered if maybe she'd bring him a Sam, too. 

"Hey, Cas," Dean said to the new guy. "I'm Dean."

"Oh," said the new guy. Cas. "What's it like here?"

"Quiet, mostly. Not a lot of people or other not-us animals," Dean said. If Cas had come from a pet store or something he was probably used to a lot of noise.

"Good," Cas said. "She pulled me out of a pet store and it was the worst."

"She gives me lots of food and plays music and we watch TV together," Dean said. "It's pretty sweet. She cleans the habitat a little too much, though. I finally get it smelling just right and then she makes a face and dumps everything out and I have to start all over again."

"Hmm. I like nesting," Cas said. "So maybe that's fun, to keep doing it new again?"

"Yeah, as complaints go it's pretty minor."

The day after the new guy showed up, Human Lady rigged the habitat to Cas's cage so that he could come and go. Dean wasn't sure why she didn't just put Cas in the habitat with Dean, but then Human Lady smelled unhappy whenever another human came into her house, so maybe she had weird ideas about hanging out. Dean was just glad she'd learned enough to make sure he had a friend.

And what a friend! Cas was pretty awesome. He never got grabby with the food, he liked to dance when Human Lady put on music and their only source of conflict, whose turn it was to use the wheel, was solved when Human Lady got them a second one. Sometimes she'd put on _The Dean and Cas Show_ and she'd run on her treadmill and they'd run on their wheels, everyone watching and running, running and watching and then all three of them would have snacks and water.

It wasn't long before Dean and Cas decided to start fooling around. They tried not to do anything too romantic when Human Lady was around but they knew it was just a matter of time before they got caught. Cas was worried that she'd be mad but Dean thought she'd be okay with it.

"I don't think she cares about the sex," he told Cas, "she just doesn't want there to be babies."

"Oh," said Cas. "So she set us up on purpose."

"I think so," said Dean. "I mean, the names alone...."

"Hmm," said Cas. And sure enough, when Human Lady saw them fooling around she just laughed.

"I guess Dean and Cas are just meant to be," she said. Then she went out and got a female pair, Charlie and Rowena, but she wouldn't let them in each other's habitats. That was fine, though, because they could communicate from across the room. Charlie came up with games for them to play that were fun even from a distance and Rowena showed them some different ways they could combine their food to make things more interesting. In exchange, Cas showed them how they could enjoy their workouts by jumping on and off the wheel and nosing around the ball in a particular order, plus some of the stretching exercises he liked to do. Dean got them caught up on _The Dean and Cas Show_ so that they could try to follow the stories. 

So life was pretty sweet. And it got even better when Human Lady apparently changed her mind about guinea pig children and brought home a couple of juveniles, Jack and Claire, and then the older guinea pigs had young 'uns to pass their knowledge down to. Plus by then Dean was pretty confident that, with Cas by his side and Rowena and Charlie raising Claire across the room, he'd be a pretty good adoptive father. Dean knew nothing lasted forever, but it made him feel better, knowing that there was a younger generation that would remember him and their other dad and their moms. And until then, there was music and nesting and food and friends.

**Author's Note:**

> The first [garbled] is "Switzerland." The second [garbled] is "legally required."


End file.
